[OFFICIAL] MoP Beta Build Changes Discussion Thread

[Deleted]

I find it funny nobody has mentioned Lava Beam yet.

[rayden54]

For the people discussing the chain heal glyph: how far would the jump need to be for it to be "viable?" Bare minimum only please.

It's possible they can increase the normal range and then increase it further with the glyph.

[Alhoon]

For the people discussing the chain heal glyph: how far would the jump need to be for it to be "viable?" Bare minimum only please.

To be comparable with other healer's tools. Namely Wild Growth and Prayer of Healing, which have 30 yard radius and are overall far better spells than Chain Heal.

[ScizCT]

Lava Surge is now : Your Flame Shock periodic damage ticks have a chance to reset the cooldown of your Lava Burst spell and cause your next Lava Burst spell to be instant.

Ooh, good catch. I've missed that set bonus this tier. That'll help keep mobile dps up if you don't take Unleashed Lightning, too.

[Endus]

I find it funny nobody has mentioned Lava Beam yet.

It's part of Ascendance, and I haven't really brought it up because it just looks like a damage-boosted CL, which it replaces.

To be comparable with other healer's tools. Namely Wild Growth and Prayer of Healing, which have 30 yard radius and are overall far better spells than Chain Heal.

Okay, that's one tool that Resto Druids and Holy Priests have.

I don't see that Disc Priests of Holy Paladins have anything similar. So what you're talking about isn't really a necessity for healers, when only 2 specs have something like that.

[Alhoon]

I don't see that Disc Priests of Holy Paladins have anything similar. So what you're talking about isn't really a necessity for healers, when only 2 specs have something like that.

PoH is a major tool for Disc too due to Divine Aegis, and Paladins have Light of Dawn. They are all different kinds of heals with different requirements, some better than others for this job, but every class has tools to heal spread out groups in AOE manner. Well, everyone except us.

But when we look at Paladins, they're more than fine overall. They are still the best tank healers, and also the best stacked up AOE healers by a million miles. As far as numbers go, Disc is a bit low at the moment but if you factor in all their utility, I think it evens out. They also have a chance to spec Holy and be awesome just like Holy had a chance to spec Disc in Firelands. Concept-wise, Disc has very unique and powerful niche with damage prevention and absorbs. I find Resto Shaman niche lacking, to say the least.

[Deleted]

To be comparable with other healer's tools. Namely Wild Growth and Prayer of Healing, which have 30 yard radius and are overall far better spells than Chain Heal.

Chain Heal is not the same type of healing spell as those though. Also WG has a 8-10 second CD and PoH is still cast on the group which means it's not a smart heal. They have different purposes and fall in a different category of spells and not every class has access to the same style of spells. This means there's a synergy between the healers which offer different things and that's a good thing. A more valid comparison would be Healing Rain, Eflloressence and the Holy priest ground one. They are similar enough because players have to stand in them, but they still work slightly different from eachother.

[Teriz]

Really? It's not like you have to really sacrifice anything to actually do that healing-ish-stuff from T5 talent (aside from the HR one, which is lame for dps).
- Spend 1 GCD for a decent Tranq-like-raid-saving-heal-CD. Ok.
- Hit a Cd and continue doing damage, but that happens to heal people who are in need of healing (smart healing). Yet again, a win.

The T6 talents require you to basically change your play (outside the UE one, which I feel is a bit weak for PvE based on wording alone) -- you need to maintain control of a 'pet' for some damage reduction. You have to actually not heal and spend time dpsing to maintain a buff that you can only hope will make up for the fact that you weren't healing (assuming that there weren't lulls in the fight that didn't require healing or something).

It almost sounds like you're upset that DPS can't heal as well as Resto or something, or the mere fact that they get the chance to heal by pressing 1 button every 2-3 minutes.

I just don't many of the complaints at this point.

LoL, I'm not upset at all. I just don't view T5 as being that fantastic for DPS specs. Sure, it adds some utility if you're DPSing, but there's nothing in T5 that rivals what T6 offers an Enhancement of Elemental Shaman. In the end, the T5 is the "Restoration tier", so Restos shouldn't be too upset about T6 being more geared for DPS. It actually makes sense when you think about it. In all honestly, it almost seems like the talent tree was designed that way.

---------- Post added 2012-03-23 at 12:07 AM ----------

Lava Surge is now : Your Flame Shock periodic damage ticks have a chance to reset the cooldown of your Lava Burst spell and cause your next Lava Burst spell to be instant.

Well its about time.

[Alhoon]

Chain Heal is not the same type of healing spell as those though. Also WG has a 8-10 second CD and PoH is still cast on the group which means it's not a smart heal. They have different purposes and fall in a different category of spells and not every class has access to the same style of spells. This means there's a synergy between the healers which offer different things and that's a good thing. A more valid comparison would be Healing Rain, Eflloressence and the Holy priest ground one. They are similar enough because players have to stand in them, but they still work slightly different from eachother.

That's a valid point. One way to see how balance should be done is that everyone has roughly the tools to deal with different mechanics, some of those being more effective than the others. Personally I don't think this approach is good, and I'd much prefer your proposition where every healer has their own niche and and together, they complement each other. However, seeing what Blizzard made with Holy Paladins in 4.3, and their overall focus shift from 25man raiding to 10mans in Cata and 5man super hard modes in MoP, I think they want the former, sadly.

Also, I'd like to ask what is Resto Shaman area of expertise currently? For Druids it's highly mobile fights, Disc Priests it's damage prevention and utility, Holy Priests it's stationary spread out AOE healing, Paladins... I'd not like to talk about it since they're about the best healers for next to everything at the moment. So, what is it for Shaman? It's not stacked up AOE healing, Paladins outshine us there by far. Holy Priests are also better than us at it.

[Deleted]

It's part of Ascendance, and I haven't really brought it up because it just looks like a damage-boosted CL, which it replaces.

That ability was quite hyped up by the players though, I can still remember Shamans going crazy over it when Ascendance was first revealed. But yeah, it's just CL that can hit a few more targets.

[Radux]

I think it may be a bit premature to state that 'X will be so much better than Y at stack/spread/tank healing/etc fights!' -- numbers change, as we all know.

Until I can get my hands on beta (I better... grr...) or get some really reliable information (via their testing), I'm not going cry about anything yet. If Resto in MoP start out like they did in Cata? Yeah then we'll have something to talk about.

That ability was quite hyped up by the players though, I can still remember Shamans going crazy over it when Ascendance was first revealed. But yeah, it's just CL that can hit a few more targets.

Yeah... I'm more than a little disappointed with it right now. I was really hoping for it to be, ya know, an epic beam of pure destruction -- kinda like that Wizard ability in D3 (the channeled DragonBallZ style one).

[Endus]

PoH is a major tool for Disc too due to Divine Aegis, and Paladins have Light of Dawn. They are all different kinds of heals with different requirements, some better than others for this job, but every class has tools to heal spread out groups in AOE manner. Well, everyone except us.

While I'll admit I haven't been following Priest development all that closely, I don't see Prayer of Healing on the MoP talent calculator for them. It's still listed on Divine Aegis, but that doesn't mean they have it.

Light of Dawn is a cone, which is its own kind of limitation. Chain Heal by default can chain off further than Light of Dawn can spread at max range. You can't look at the 30 yard range of Light of Dawn, since that's as relevant as Chain Heal's 40 yard range to this particular issue.

[Lellybaby]

If you guys want anything beta tested from an 85 Resto/Elemental shaman perspective I'll have my shaman copied over by tomorrow.

[Radux]

While I'll admit I haven't been following Priest development all that closely, I don't see Prayer of Healing on the MoP talent calculator for them. It's still listed on Divine Aegis, but that doesn't mean they have it.

The original design intent was to have Holy use PoH, and Disc was supposed to use Holy Nova.

I think in the Press Release they said it essentially wasn't going to happen that way, thus both are still workin' with PoH, while Holy also has CoH and Sanc (or whatever that thing is).

[rayden54]

To be comparable with other healer's tools. Namely Wild Growth and Prayer of Healing, which have 30 yard radius and are overall far better spells than Chain Heal.

Right now the range is 12.5 yards. If a mechanic requires the players to stand 13 yards apart, then chain heal is effectively useless. That's what I mean by bare minimum.

[Alhoon]

While I'll admit I haven't been following Priest development all that closely, I don't see Prayer of Healing on the MoP talent calculator for them. It's still listed on Divine Aegis, but that doesn't mean they have it.

Now that I think of it, I remember Blizzard saying they want PoH to be Holy only and CoH to be Disc only. Or the other way around. Either way, both of these specs will likely have an effective tool for spread out AOE healing.

Light of Dawn is a cone, which is its own kind of limitation. Chain Heal by default can chain off further than Light of Dawn can spread at max range. You can't look at the 30 yard range of Light of Dawn, since that's as relevant as Chain Heal's 40 yard range to this particular issue.

Yeah, Light of Dawn is probably the least effective of these tools, seeing it requires Holy Power stack too. I'd not look at the cone as a limitation, but I'd rather look at how wide area the spell is likely to cover. Sure, Chain Heal can travel massive distance if you prearrange players in a line, but in real raid environment, that's never going to happen. When people have to spread 10 yards, given enough space, they're very likely going to spread more than that.

[Deleted]

I guess Blizz found a solution to the chain heal jump distance when working on the monk mistweaver spells (heal). In any case the Glyph of Chaining is great and combined with the Glyph of Riptide will be even more potent : 25% increase and 15% decrease = 6.25% increase with a jump distance of 25 yards ...

I guess we'll still get the bonus from Chain Healing off an Earth Shielded target as well, unless that mechanic has changed?

[Recom]

I guess we'll still get the bonus from Chain Healing off an Earth Shielded target as well, unless that mechanic has changed?

It's still there and was actually buffed to 20% (instead of 18%). It's baseline in Earthshield.

[Northy]

I just noticed, Lava Surge makes Lava Burst instant. I don't remember it being like that back when I quit WoW. Was that changed and is it like that currently in live?

[Radux]

I just noticed, Lava Surge makes Lava Burst instant. I don't remember it being like that back when I quit WoW. Was that changed and is it like that currently in live?

That's a new (and awesome) thing. Basically baked T12 4 piece right into Lava Surge - and rightfully so.